In the article American Indian Movement It explains how the government promised many things including good jobs, housing, and vocational training for those who would move. The author then says “As a result, thousands of Native Americans migrated to the cities. But many of them never received the promised funding and benefits”(“American”). The book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie is about a boy named Junior who is an Indian that lives on a reservation. The book goes through the struggles Junior has on the reservation with his best friend Rowdy when Junior moves schools and the struggles Junior has with his family. Junior’s life as a Native American on a reservation is different from a non-native American's life …show more content…
There are a lot of people that suffer with addiction in the Reservation that Junior lives in. Junior’s dads friend Eugene was an alcoholic and was fighting with his friend Bobby. Eugene and Bobby were both drunk, fighting over the last sip of wine outside of a 7-Eleven when Eugene was shot by Bobby killing Eugene. Bobby would later kill himself well in jail. Junior Says, “Way drunk, Eugene was shot and killed by one of his good friends Bobby, who was too drunk to even remember pulling the trigger… When Bobby was sober enough to realize what he’d done he could only call Eugene’s name” (Alexie 169-171). This connects to the topic sentence because this is not something that would normally happen in a non-native American’s life but addiction is more common on reservations which makes stuff like this more …show more content…
Junior’s family and a lot of other people in the Reservation do not have a lot of money and are very poor. When Junior went to dinner with Penolope and Roger at Denny's, Junior had not told them that he had no money and would not be able to pay for the food so Junior pukes in the bathroom over the guilt. Roger finds Junior and offers to pay for the food and later Junior tells Penelope that he is poor. Junior says, “Most nights, I walk home. I hitchhike. Somebody usually picks me up. I've only had to walk the whole way a few times. She started to cry” (Alexie 129). This shows that Native Americans lives on reservations and non-native American’s lives are different because it shows that Penelope and Roger are not used to seeing poor people as there are more poor people in the reservations. It also shows how Penolope reacts with sadness after hearing about what Junior has to do to get
In “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” internal and external expectations shaped Junior’s life by giving him the strength to grow and give him a reason to live. Growing up in a discriminated Indian reservation, external expectations told Junior to never leave the reservation for something better. “Reservations were supposed to move onto reservations and die. We were supposed to disappear” (216). Everyone around Junior created this picture that Indians were expected to never stray from the reservation.
A Spokane Indian reservation in Wellpinit, Washington is the setting of Alexie’s book. The Indian reservation gives us a firsthand look of a poverty stricken community. The main character in the book Arnold and his family and mostly all other families living on this reservation are poor. Their community is isolated from society; the main character feels that “the reservation is meant to be a prison” in the sense that they are isolated from the real world (Alexie 216).
Lyric Sinan Sinanian Mr. Rodriguez Academic Literacy 21 April 2023 The Issue of Poverty The damaging consequences of poverty are a big issue in America, and have raised in severity over the years. In the realistic fiction novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, the life of a poor Native American exhibits the terrors of poverty and how it can affect families within the poor communities in the country. The economically unfortunate have seen the worse come over them and their family.
The diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie is a novel about a disabled Indian boy's life on a reservation in Spokane, Washington. Alexie describes the complications and struggles that Junior endures throughout the process of changing schools. Arnold Spirit Jr is fourteen years old and is forced to act like an adult for him to be able to choose the life he desires. Throughout the book we see Junior change the way he sees himself and how he sees himself through the eyes of others. He begins to find his own value that had been hidden behind a curtain of self doubt.
He is a poor Indian going to a middle-class white kid school, but there is more to that. At the reservation there are these unspoken rules, if someone talks badly or insults you, you have to fight them, that is the first one on that list. Getting into fights is normal at Wellpinit but at Rearden, everyone is all talk. In the book, a kid named Roger and his friends were making fun of Junior so he punches Roger. Roger is taken aback because no one at Rearden actually gets into fistfights.
In modern society, the belief in upward progress dictates how most live their lives, and has also affected how Native Americans live today. This is represented by the lives of Junior in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian and
Junior loses a lot of friends and family at the young age of fourteen. He gets bullied because he was born with too much cerebral spinal fluid inside his skull, but he has his best friend Rowdy there to help him. Junior realizes that he needs to leave the reservation to get a better life for himself. He goes to a new school off the
Effects of Alcohol in Communities Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian takes place in the present time in Spokane, Washington. This is a story of a boy named Junior who grows up on an Indian reservation and has to fight with poverty while watching alcohol destroy his family as he tries to find hope. He realizes in order to find hope he must get out of the reservation, so his way of doing that is by attending Reardan, an all-white school outside of Spokane, where he faces a complete set of new challenges. In his novel, Alexie conveys the idea that the misuse of alcohol has devastating effects on a community.
In this book it talks about a Native American boy who is born with major health differences and the book is mainly about his life on the Reservation. Junior deals with many different hardships over the course of this book, he is bullied for his differences and he and his parents are not really involved with each other, he also grows up very poor. Junior acts a certain way in life, instead of seeing things positively he sees everything negatively. Junior looks upon his own culture at times \, for example when his sister dies, he is awaiting his father to come pick him up, and he worries about his father crashing his car and says, “Oh, man, wouldn't that just be perfect? Yep, how Indian would that be?
Junior never gave up on hope no matter how many people he had to lose. The importance of this character is not that he is the main character but the way he showed all the problems that not only he had to go through but Indians and all colored people even if he never truly said it, you can understand the stress. Sherman Alexie was sharing all his thoughts through a character he made up that represented him as a 14-year-old boy, which makes us understand more about the book since we are all at the age to realize the meaning behind every chapter. Junior’s character is the most relatable because we all have gone through some much as youngsters but we also can overcome fear, stress, anxiety, and more after just accepting who we are and loving ourselves without hiding ourselves from
Many Native Americans live on reservations that were established in 1851 under President Andrew Jackson. Life on a reservation is not glamorous. A majority of the stories are filled with alcohol, suffering, death, and sadness. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie details some of the experiences that that Native American culture faces. Arnold reflects on the treatment of Native Americans when he states “We Indians have lost everything… We only know how to lose and be lost”(Alexie 173).
In his book the Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie portrays a teenage boy, Arnold Spirit (junior) living in white man’s world, and he must struggle to overcome racism and stereotypes if he must achieve his dreams. In the book, Junior faces a myriad of misfortunes at his former school in ‘the rez’ (reservation), which occurs as he struggles to escape from racial and stereotypical expectations about Indians. For Junior he must weigh between accepting what is expected of him as an Indian or fight against those forces and proof his peers and teachers wrong. Therefore, from the time Junior is in school at reservation up to the time he decides to attend a neighboring school in Rearden, we see a teenager who is facing tough consequences for attempting to go against the racial stereotypes.
He realizes that his team has numerous economic and social advantages. Junior’s ability to address topics like poverty, racism and bullying with humor is a significant characteristic of his voice. For Junior, as well as his friends Rowdy and Penelope, part of growing up is recognizing that the world is more complicated than a strict division of opposites, it’s possible to be more than one thing—part of countless different “tribes”—is what enables him to unify his split identity and, as someone destined to travel beyond the reservation, navigate the world both figuratively and
Alcohol and Stereotypes keep native Americans in the reservations just like Junior 's family, in the novel, Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. Before Junior transferred to Reardan High School, he got suspended from school and his teacher, Mr P., came to his house, “ 'And you’re a bright and shining star, too, ' he said. 'You’re the smartest kid in the school. And I don’t want you to fail. I don’t want you to fade away.
Life on the reservation for the Sioux was very different from their traditional life. Everyone was treated the same in the reservations, which were run by government agents. Their means of regarding everyone as equal was to break down the tribal government. No longer would there be one tribal chief who would lead them all. There was a saying in the reservation that went, “Every man a chief.”